Month: August 2009

Z started walking about three weeks ago. He had been “walking” with our hands for months (even before he started crawling) but he just didn’t want to let go. We’ve certainly learned that Z does everything in his own time, and we weren’t trying to rush him (though our backs were starting to suffer). And then he accidentally took a couple steps on his own. And three days later he took a few more. And a few days after that, he started doing laps between me and my mom. And after that it was all over. He now paces up and down the hallway, going in an out of rooms along the way. He practically runs circles around the little island in our kitchen, climbing through the legs of anyone he meets along the way. And he does it with the most adorable grin on his face – he is clearly soooo happy to be mobile.

After only three weeks, though, he’s still a little wobbly and he’s totally oblivious to changes in terrain. So when he batted my hand away on some uneven sidewalk in Rhinebeck this afternoon, he did his first full-on face plant. Now Z cries a lot, and even some of his tears of frustration are pretty real. But this was different. He was clearly scared and a little banged up and it was all I could do to not start crying myself. Poor baby.

Side note: I’m often amazed at how quickly my frustration with him disappears when he really needs me. He’d been fussing and complaining for a good part of the afternoon and I was about ready to drop him at the local firehouse. And then this happened and all I wanted to do was snuggle him and make it all better. I feel the same way after he goes to sleep each night. I often long for the end of the day so I can get a break from him, and then as soon as he’s asleep I kind of miss him.

So Z was fine after a few minutes and was back to toddling around the streets of Rhinebeck. But an hour or so later this little red bruise showed up on his left cheek. He’s had a couple little bruises on his knees (and the crazy self-inflicted hickey when he was just a few months old), but this was the first time the big bad world left its mark on my baby. I know I have to brace myself for much more serious incidents – he is a crazy boy, after all, bound for trouble. But I’ll be holding his hand a little tighter for awhile, ready to scoop him up the moment he starts to totter.

It’s been awhile. I know it’s not possible to accurately summarize the past four months in a single entry, so I’ll focus on the highlights and try to fill in the details later on.

Our boy is 15 months old today. He walks. He talks. He makes animal sounds and he makes us laugh. He loves to watch the birds in the feeder outside our front window. He often spots deer before we do. He loves cars. He REALLY loves cars. (Anything with wheels is a car.) He LOVES to be outside and he insists on going outside by yelling “HAAAA” and pointing at the door multiple times every day. He’s hungry all the time (a VERY welcome change). He still doesn’t eat dairy but he eats almost everything else, especially chicken. He regularly takes one nap a day (between 1 and 3 hours) and usually makes it through the night without us.

Side note: all around 1 year, Z started crawling (a crazy one knee, one foot shuffle), stopped breastfeeding, started sleeping through the night, dropped his second nap, and started talking. (I think his first word was “duck” but he picked up so many words soon after that it’s a little hard to say. The complete list in another post.)

Z’s baby cousin will be born any day now and I’m so excited to be an aunt.

And finally, we are home owners – of a three-bedroom house on an acre of land in Red Hook, NY, halfway between Albany and NYC.

We did our best to get settled quickly, to create a new routine for Z that feels normal and consistent, and I think we achieved that. He’s still Z – passionate and headstrong and emotional and yes, fussy or temperamental or whatever you want to call it. But he does seem happy here.

For our part, we miss Oakland every single day and I think it will be a long time before that wears off. I think of the Bay Area as the best time of my life – the place where I really became an adult, figured a few things out, made some wonderful friends, and had a hell of a lot of fun. Oddly enough, moving back here doesn’t feel like giving that all up. It feels like locking it away with all the other wonderful memories – camp, parts of high school, college – all great experiences that naturally must come to an end. And it feels like we are doing what we need to do to allow Zekey to begin his own wonderful memories, in a place where he has room to run, where we don’t have to lock the doors, where he can go to public school, where he can spend lots of time with his grandparents, and where he can escape from and come back to one day when the time feels right. And that’s what we have done. And I have no regrets.